大象传媒

From how to make a pickle glow to why we break wind, the internet is awash with the science behind food.

When you think about it, we鈥檙e all mucking about with scientific principles whenever we cook. Simply frying an egg creates the most extraordinary series of chemical changes as egg proteins unfold and shift from their frogspawn-like clumps into a tangled mesh. You may simply see an egg turning white, but you鈥檙e playing with chemistry, physics and pan thermodynamics there, Sonny Jim.

Here I present a few of my favourite weird and (sometimes) wonderful food research projects, facts and oddities.

• This site is a legend 鈥� they put pretty much anything into their blenders to prove efficacy. Watch them blend an iPhone and DON鈥橳 TRY IT AT HOME!
• A dye used in M&Ms (Brilliant Blue G) (temporarily)
• (or at least a protein that鈥檚 found in it!)
• 鈥� or caviar out of pretty much anything

Interesting foods and flavours

• What do you call a sandwich in a can? A , obviously.
• , including honey flavour. Why not just use honey?

But I need more. Please tell me about your oddly fascinating food facts.

Stefan Gates is a 大象传媒 presenter and food writer.

When the idea for a show on the new wave of food entrepreneurs was first suggested by The Food Programme team, I鈥檒l admit I had some preconceptions. I had received hundreds of eager press releases about the launch of food 鈥樷��. Each told a similar wonderful tale of a couple of bright people quitting the corporate to move to the country and produce... well insert your own 鈥榓rtisanal鈥� product here. I confess, I was more than a little cynical.

Banks and investors, of course, can have little interest in businesses run on love and enthusiasm, particularly those that intend to grow organically. This probably explains why so many of these operations are being set up without the help of outside finance, using savings, redundancy cheques or family money. It鈥檚 odd perhaps to see this as a benefit but actually it does represent a substantial net injection of money into the food sector and, let鈥檚 just remind ourselves that what caused the dotcom bubble to burst was not a drying up of ideas or drive but a huge surge of greedy and overoptimistic investment.

As a result of the new wave of food entrepreneurs, new food businesses are generating exciting new ideas, bringing in new money and growing sensibly and organically. Far from being the bubble I鈥檇 anticipated, from which the commercial side of the British food renaissance can continue to grow. In a time of recession and bleakness in business that鈥檚 a pleasantly positive conclusion to reach.

But what do you think? Might this still turn out to be a bubble or is there a growing market as our national attitude to food continues to improve? Are more small independents a good thing or will the High Street become clogged with shops full of hand-whittled cookies and organic yogurt lassis? Are you tempted to take the leap into an independent food business? Listen to the show this week and tell us what you think.

Tim Hayward is a food writer and blogger, and presents this week鈥檚 edition of The Food Programme.

One famous cookery writer I know, when I grilled her about another famous cook鈥檚 latest bestseller, just rolled her eyes and whispered, 鈥淚 just couldn鈥檛 get into it. It has sat by my bedside for a month now and every time I try to read it I give up and go to sleep. Too syrupy and more than I ever cared to know.鈥� But there鈥檚 a distinct pressure to write those sorts of books, simply because they sell so well. One agent told me, 鈥渇orget recipes鈥o-one鈥檚 interested. They can Google for that. What readers want from a cookbook is lifestyle, an enviable homely lifestyle that they might in their dreams aspire to one day鈥�. Ouch.

Is that reader you? It was me in my teens and twenties, before the harsher realties of life and its obstacles became glaringly clear, before I鈥檇 learned to have patience for my own emerging style. I鈥檇 look at 鈥檚 Food, Wine and Friends, the grand daddy of all enviable-lifestyle cookery books, and wonder what it鈥檇 be like to have both Bianca Jagger and Tina Turner around for lunch - "would they fight? What about their diets?" - thinking that one day, surely, cooking the dishes in Carrier鈥檚 book would at the very least put me in the running should they ever find themselves in with a spare afternoon. Back then life was full of those possibilities鈥�

Today, though my life does have some glamour (despite that Jagger and Turner still haven鈥檛 called), the recipes I turn to are more about finding answers than living up to some aspiration. And many of you feel the same. Years ago I wrote a chapter for The Cook鈥檚 Book, for a publisher called known for their how-to manuals. You probably haven鈥檛 heard of it, there was no TV-tie in, very little magazine or other press, no celebrity names involved. If there was a stealth cookery title that avoided mainstream press detection, that was it. Last month I got the sales figures through: over 440,000 copies in hardback worldwide, for a book that does nothing else than explain, step-by-step, how to cook and bake.

Now that鈥檚 not meant to happen, but it does and fairly often it seems. Browsing though there are - bobbing just under the big TV names like Antonio Carluccio, Rick Stein and the - are many steady selling cookbooks that do little more than teach you how to cook or bake. Books on slow-cooking, 鈥� brilliant 101 series, The River Cottage鈥檚 dinky little specialist handbooks... This is at a time when it鈥檚 easier than ever to go to a website like this one and pluck a free recipe from the archive.


So what鈥檚 it to be? Do you shun celebrity or authority? Do instructional cookbooks seem too hectoring, or are lifestyle-centred books for anyone but you? As more website and offer free recipes, have you discarded books entirely in favour of that online bonanza, or does the paper and glare-less reading make traditional recipe books essential in your kitchen?

Dan Lepard is a food writer for the Guardian and a baking expert.

When I received yet another email asking me for summer cupcake party suggestions, I didn't need any more reminding that we are in the 'pretty' cupcake season. Big cupcakes, little cupcakes... all sizes can be right for celebrating graduations, baby and wedding showers, family gatherings, picnics and garden parties. They can even become a memorable 'wedding cake'.

听

听

Getting prepared

I like to get my cupcakes organised early for this busy season. First I go shopping for the prettiest cupcake liners that I can find. After baking several batches of yellow cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes, I wrap the cooled cakes tightly and freeze them for up to a month. When the first gathering or party comes along, I defrost as many cupcakes as I need, fit a pastry bag with a star tip, fill the bag with frosting and pipe out swirls of frosting over the top of each cake. It's a pretty and fast way to frost and decorate in one easy step. Alternatively use a thin spatula to spread the frosting over the cupcakes.

In the video below Dan Lepard shows three different ways to use buttercream to make your cupcakes look really impressive.

Frostings

The frosting I use is generally buttercream-type icing. The most basic buttercream frosting is made from butter and powdered sugar, then add a little liquid (this can include melted chocolate) and a little flavoring such as vanilla extract, liqueurs or citrus zest. You can also use cream cheese to replace some of the butter to produce an ultra-creamy frosting that is less sweet. If you wish to freeze the frosting, once the cupcakes are decorated, chill or freeze them uncovered to firm the frosting. As soon as the frosting is firm, wrap them individually, seal tightly in a container, and freeze for up to one month. Be sure to defrost cupcakes with their wrapping on so that any condensation that forms will form on the wrapper, not on the cupcake. Freezing the frosting alone is not a time saver. You have to defrost it, beat it again to fluff it and then spread it on the cupcakes.

听

听

Weddings

For weddings, cupcakes can be arranged on glass pedestal platters, pretty platters or cupcake wire stands. I scatter sprinkles, chocolate curls, or edible and unsprayed flowers over the frosting to top off my decorations: violets, rose petals or nasturtiums can be used from the start of spring to the last days of summer. Speak to the bride and groom about what they want, but remember that it's a good idea to keep decorations simple. A smooth white or chocolate glaze looks nice. Or try using silver or gold liners for the cupcakes and toppings of edible gold leaf, silver or gold or white .

Serving cupcakes is so easy. They're already in single portion servings and each one is nesting in its own decorative container. If I want to transport them, I pop them back in their baking pans and into a basket or box where they will sit safely over bumpy roads or on swaying trains.

Filling the cases

You can get so many different sized cases these days, so a good guide for how much batter you should add to each cupcake pan or liner is to take it generally to about 1cm/陆in below the top of the liner - often about a quarter of a cup of batter (sorry, I think in American cups... you can ). Mini-cupcake liners or fairy cakes should be filled to about 5mm/录in below the top of the liner - often about one tablespoon of batter. A recipe that makes 12 normal size cupcakes will make about 48 mini-cakes.

Decoration ideas

Look for seasonal decorations in markets, specialist baking stores and party decoration shops. Below are some ideas to get started at different times of the year:

听

• Birthdays: Candles, especially tall thin ones in multi-colors, are apropos and easy; chocolate curls make gorgeous and delicious decorations.
• Picnics: Crushed toffee or other candy makes a nice edible decoration; picnic cupcakes should be able to stand up to warm weather or a few drops of rain.
• Garden parties: Edible and unsprayed flower petals and small flowers are perfect.
• Graduation: Chocolate frosted cupcakes are great for this; look for candy diplomas or tassel hats to decorate; using a pastry bag fitted with a writing tip and putting one letter on each cupcake, pipe congratulations and the name of the graduate in white frosting.
• Baby showers: Yellow or pink and blue sprinkles look lovely on white frosting; decorate platters with ribbons or use curling ribbon to surround the cupcakes on a platter.听 Shredded coconut makes a fluffy pretty topping and pastel candies tucked into the coconut look even better.
• Mother's Day: Tint frosting pink with a few drops of food coloring; decorate with a scattering of fresh raspberries or small , such as pansies.

So over to you, what are your favourite decorations for cupcakes? How do you take your cupcake decorating to the next level?

Elinor Klivans is a cookbook author and food writer specialising in baking.

Nigella Lawson likes it slathered in Marmite and goes for a cheeky translation of it 鈥�alla puttanesca鈥�; Rick Stein鈥檚 keen on carbonara (the classic Italian version without cream); while Nigel Slater makes it with a mean mustardy sausage sauce. Yes we鈥檙e talking pasta. How on earth did we ever cope without the stuff?

So why do Britons love pasta so much? It鈥檚 : tomatoey or creamy sauces can create the base to all kinds of different dishes. Dried pasta has a long-shelf life and often makes the most of other storecupboard ingredients like tinned tomatoes, olives, anchovies, chorizo or frozen peas.

Pasta鈥檚 cheap (even with ), quick, easy to make in bulk and a crowd-pleaser that kids generally love, so perfect for time-pressed parents. There are endless variations and plenty of vegetarian options. But pasta doesn鈥檛 just have to be for speedy mid-week dinners: making pasta dough by hand is quicker than making your own bread - you just need to get yourself a pasta machine. This side of our love affair with pasta isn鈥檛 about convenience; here we鈥檙e reaching out for a little Italian romance and sunshine into our kitchens.

What鈥檚 your favourite pasta recipe? Are you stuck on studenty pasta bakes or Ready Steady Cook-style meaty suppers? Why do you think the British love pasta so much?

Ramona Andrews is the host of the 大象传媒 Food Q&A blog and messageboard.

Dweeby food writers like me love wasting absurd amounts of time writing about ancient, arcane and forgotten recipes. It鈥檚 what floats our culino-literary boat. Trouble is, the only people who can be bothered to read them or shell out any actual cash on books about them are鈥ell鈥e and a few other nerdy food writers.

So is all that time wasted? Not entirely, I鈥檇 argue. I think most people are pleased that someone is researching this stuff that they鈥檒l never read, in the same way that I鈥檓 very happy that academics write about . I鈥檓 glad that someone鈥檚 doing this work, even if I鈥檒l be damned if I鈥檒l ever read it myself.

The trouble is that feeling arcane and eclectic is all well and good, but it doesn鈥檛 buy you biscuits. So I thought I鈥檇 write just one more piece on old recipes and if no one鈥檚 interested, this鈥檒l be my last. My roasted swansong, if you will. And I鈥檒l keep it all practical and bullet-pointy so as to keep you awake.

• Old British recipes had funny but rubbish names such as (a chicken-shaped oatmeal pudding which fooled no-one), (a beefy slurry), Aberdeen nips (haddock on toast), (meatballs), (currant cakes) and wet nelly (suet-based bread and spice pud).
• The oldest recipes in the world are written on Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, translated by Jean Bottero in his book . The recipes are problematic in practical terms as many key ingredients are unidentifiable.
• There鈥檚 a Roman cookery book called Apicius, compiled in the late 4th/5th Century AD. It鈥檚 pretty good. It鈥檚 got recipes such as rose hips and calf鈥檚 brains custard鈥�, but it鈥檚 not entirely clear whether 鈥楢picius鈥� is the name of the book or a bloke.
• Forme of Cury is a 14th century English cookbook, written by the chief Master Cooks of King Richard II. There鈥檚 a full .
• Petits Propos Culinaire (generally known as PPC) is a glorious thrice-yearly repository of wonderful arcana about food. It鈥檚 academic yet fascinating. It鈥檚 probably illegal to read it unless you鈥檙e a dweeby food writer like me, though. They might let you in if you ask nicely.

My favourite ye olde recipe is Buckinghamshire bacon badger. There is, sadly, no badger in a 'Badger' (only bacon), though if you鈥檝e got one in the fridge, I鈥檇 slip it in anyway. Here's my recipe with a few pictures.

Buckinghamshire bacon badger
Feeds 4
听
200g/7oz self-raising flour
ground black pepper
90g/3录oz shredded beef suet
cold water
400g/14oz back bacon rashers
150g/5陆oz chopped onions
1 tsp chopped fresh sage
1 tsp chopped fresh parsley
100g/3陆oz diced potatoes

First, make your suet pastry: sift the flour into a mixing bowl and grind in some black pepper, then add the suet and mix together using a knife. Add cold water, drip by drip, mixing all the time to make a nice, gluey dough. Now use your hands to work it, binding it together into a smooth elastic dough.

Lightly flour a surface and roll the pastry out into a long, even rectangle about 25cm/10in wide, and as long as you can manage without the pastry getting too thin.

Leaving 2.5cm/1in clear all around the pastry, spread the bacon rashers over it and cover this with the onions, sage and parsley. Season with pepper (no salt) and spread the diced potato slices along the middle.

Roll the whole thing up, sealing the edges by pressing them together.

Wrap this tightly in muslin or a clean tea towel to keep its shape and boil gently in a large pan of water for three hours.

If you knew there was a traditional grain miller whose flour was available at a local store, at around twice the price of the industrial roller milled flour you buy at the supermarket, would you pay the extra? We鈥檙e living in a time where everyone - bankers excluded - is feeling the pinch of a shrunken economy, job uncertainty and higher prices. So, is flour milled the traditional way an essential part of good baking for you or just a fancy pants extravagance for the overpaid?

If you look at the you鈥檒l see that a fair number of us in Britain live within driving distance of a wind or water mill. These - 鈥榗orn鈥� is the traditional word for grain - are typically powered from a running stream, and through a series of complex cogs and wheels driving a large gritty stone that rotates slowly and turns the whole grain into flour. Whereas for , the way most of our supermarket flour is produced, the oil-rich wheatgerm and bran is usually removed first, and then electrically powered rollers grind the flour at high speed. This means flour is milled quickly contributing to its lower price.

Roller milled flour is often imported and sometimes blended from different batches, even though that isn鈥檛 mentioned on the label; whereas traditional cornmillers are simply the source: what goes in the top on the stone comes out into the bag you buy. It is possible to buy wholemeal roller milled flour, the sort you typically see at the supermarkets, but the components need to be recombined: the bran and germ ground separately and added back to the white flour.

Now my work makes me the worst person to ask, 鈥淚s it worth it?鈥� I鈥檓 never short of flour, get given samples often, and to be honest have a deep unbridled respect and admiration for the traditional cornmillers around the world who live relatively meekly and work hard. But I like to think that if my life were to change then spending extra on flour would be a small price to pay for better flavour in my baking.

To be fair there are strengths and arguable weaknesses to both flour types. Stone ground flour always has a darker colour and stronger bran flavour: perfect if you鈥檙e making a rustic bread loaf or dark crumbed cake, while pound cakes and scones become an 鈥渁cquired taste鈥�. The crumb structure becomes coarser and heavier, again good when that鈥檚 what you want: a chocolate brownie or a soft cookie benefits from extra density, while sponge cakes often loose lightness and delicacy. White b茅chamel sauce becomes brown sauce, and shortbread takes on a rich bran flavour paired with a dull beige colour.

In favour of roller milled flour you have the lightest textured breads and cakes that can look superb. As roller milled white flours are especially refined, containing very little bran, they produce very elastic dough compared to stonemilled flour. This tempts many bakers who like to call themselves 鈥榓rtisans', as the dough from roller milled flour is very forgiving. Yet to depend entirely on it makes a mockery of their artisan ideals.

Do you use traditionally milled flour in your baking? Or if you know of an artisan flour provider in your area, let us know.

Dan Lepard is a food writer for and a baking expert.

Consider the , the most demonised food on the planet. So often it鈥檚 used as shorthand for everything that鈥檚 wrong with the way we eat: soybeans used to feed cattle grown on land that was once rainforest, heating up the world so that we can get our 拢1.49 fix; and then all that grain and protein shovelled into animals that are designed to eat grass. It does them no good, contributing to the development of dangerous forms of E.coli in animals that have - when meat鈥檚 been contaminated in slaughter houses - led to severe food poisoning. Not to mention the millions of hectares of land that could be used to grow food directly for us. And at the end of it all when the patties hit the high street, they鈥檙e served up on white squishy buns with enough sugary, fatty gloop to raise your . So should we give up the hamburger?

Well, not quite. The key is the meat. It鈥檚 hard to make an argument that animals reared as described above, are anything but a disaster. There鈥檚 a lot of cash in it for fast-food chains, corporate farms and the global grain trading companies, but the meat itself has few virtues: mostly it lacks taste - though McDonalds in the UK has broken with this tradition and are now using only British and Irish beef. But what if hamburgers became a treat again? That鈥檚 the idea behind a young, informal movement that sets up get-togethers to eat burgers made from grass-fed British beef from traditional breeds.听

In this week鈥檚 Food Programme, I went to one of them: a pop-up in what during the day is a greasy spoon caff in East London. The chefs were young and taking a night off from working in their normal, far-grander restaurants, the young crowd were keen and the hamburgers were a revelation; nothing fancy, just great meat in a well made bun. But the meat came from animals produced on farms where beef production is just one part of a more complex mixed farming system. How crucial that is became clear as we talked in the programme to farmer , author of Meat: A Benign Extravagance, and whose book Good Food for Everyone Forever makes the case for what he calls Real Farming.听 Both of them argue that we need meat - nothing else can be grown on the uplands that make up 40 per cent of the land mass of the UK, but that meat has to be almost the by-product of the sort of farming that鈥檚 environmentally benign, is based on good animal welfare and that produces meat with real taste and great nutritional value. Meat, in fact, like the stuff that went into our Burger Monday burgers - not 拢1.49, but a treat worth saving up for.听

Sheila Dillon is the presenter of Radio 4鈥檚 The Food Programme.

Are you turned off by takeaway burgers? Or are you enjoying your own burgeoning burger revolution? Let us know...